Shack Tactical - Serious Fun!

[Dslyecxi]

Over the past months, ShackTac has made the transition over into an ACRE-based community, joining many other communities in the belief that ACRE's VON fidelity makes it a necessity for good teamwork and gameplay.

I've picked a few examples of recent videos showing off our ACRE usage as well as our general gameplay. This first one is an adversarial mission where Russian heliborne troops are assaulting several suspected insurgent locations. This is the third LZ they've done so far, and it just so happens that my insurgent team is waiting in the hills, watching them come in for a landing, holding our fire in the hopes that they will commit to the landing...

The next video is a coop mission called 'Quick & Dirty'. In this, we're fighting our way to a factory compound, from which we plan to call in a helo extract. Things do not go quite according to plan, and we find ourselves in a long, crazy firefight.

All in all, it's business as usual in ShackTac. We're always open to new members, just take a look at our site and send me an inquiry if interested.

[Dslyecxi]

October finds ShackTac making the transition from ol' faithful Yoma's AddonSync over to Sickboy's 6updater program for our mod distribution. YAS has served us well for years, but as the times change, it seems inevitable that 6updater is the way to go for us. Many thanks to Yoma for YAS and his past efforts and support, as well as to Sickboy for both his program and his ever-chipper support and enthusiasm for his projects.

Aside from this, we've been doing some training events lately - one of them is posted below, showing a Fireteam Leadership course hosted October 2nd by Bricks & assistants. This event was a fun way to give some aspiring and current leaders a way to develop and refine their skills, reinforce the good habits, and correct the bad ones. It went quite well, and CHKilroy put together a video of it for the benefit of those unable to attend - both in and out of ShackTac. It's about an hour and a half long, but if you're looking for some good leadership tips and examples of how to conduct interesting and engaging training, it should entertain.

Then of course we have stuff like this next clip, showing a slice of the kind of high-intensity engagements we're so fond of getting into - perfect opportunities to practice the sorts of skills gained in the above training.

Like what you see and want to know more? Check out our site, where you can find joining instructions & prerequisites, session galleries, and more.

[Dslyecxi]

Another year and ShackTac's still tickin' - today marks our sixth anniversary as a group, whee!

If you're looking for a group where the community experience is paramount and your personality means more than your tactical proficiency, ShackTac is the group for you. When we say 'serious fun', it's more than just a catchy tag - it's an ethos that we strive to maintain and refine year after year. If you want the ultimate in hardcore milsim, look elsewhere - that's not our thing. If, on the other hand, you're looking for a community atmosphere that is second-to-none, with "where it matters" pragmatic, no-nonsense tactics adopted from our detailed TTP2 - step right up and apply.

I've put together a page of images used in our internal discussion of the year's events - accessible here.

Our own CHKilroy has once again made a fantastic video recap of the year - HD recommended as always:

[Dslyecxi]

Nearly halfway through 2012, ShackTac continues strong. Our most recent Saturday event saw us hitting 80 players peak, and recent events have seen us onboarding even more new members than usual at this time of the year. It's quite an exciting time for us, and with A3 on the horizon, the future is looking even brighter.

If you're curious to know what we've been doing recently, let's check out a few samples. First, we released the Littlebird Enhancement Mod recently, adding a bunch of new enhancements and features to my personal favorite airframe.

We also had a fun time with DayZ, the fantastic zombie-survival mod that has since exploded onto the scene. You can see our DayZ story starting here (and continuing for six parts so far).

We've kept to our principles of 'Serious Fun' and have ended up with some great experiences thanks to it. Many of them have been recorded by our own CHKilroy, session videographer extraordinaire, while many others have picked up notable highlights as well.

Some were serious.

Some... less so.

Others... well, we don't always like to talk about the others...

As always, our doors remain open to those willing to live up to the standards and ideals that we've established and refined over the years. You need only check out our site for joining information.

If you've been searching for a community with minimum drama and maximum entertainment, packed full of great members who have been around for years, happy to bring in new people wherever they hail from, look no further.

[Dslyecxi]

Thanks in a significant part to DayZ's influence on the scene, ShackTac continues to grow in numbers. We've recently seen a peak of 117 players in one of our sessions, and hit the 100+ player mark regularly on Saturdays and even often on Wednesday sessions now. The situation we find ourselves in as a group currently is, in a word, awesome - and as always, I want to share our experiences out of pride at what we've accomplished.

I have always been a fan of showing a community by the content that they actually play, instead of making staged cinematic videos that don't show anything real. In light of this, I've started spending a bit more time recording missions that ShackTac plays. These are my three most recent ones, each an unscripted, typical ShackTac event. The first two are from a Wednesday "pre-FNG" session, in which we on-board new members and give other members chances to try new roles and responsibilities, while the third - Nomads - is just a random during-the-week impromptu lower-playercount mission.

As always, you can find more about us at my site. Six and a half years strong and still growing.

[Dslyecxi]

Adversarial Gaming
One of the things that sets ShackTac apart from many other ArmA groups is the fact that we play far more than just coop - in fact, we're stacked about 70-80% in favor of adversarial player-vs-player missions, with the remainder being coop. Thus, the tactics we use are employed against thinking, reacting enemies, and not just rigid and generally inflexible AI. The intensity of these high-playercount (100+) adversarials is incredible, and I picked a few examples from our recent gaming to show this:







You can find a great many recent ShackTac videos on my channel as well - dozens having been added over the last months.

Recent Coop
We also do some pretty killer coop!


Dslyecxi's Blog
Also, I've started a blog where I field questions about our gaming, ShackTac, myself, etc - if interested, you can find it here.

The Delayed Entry Program
Finally, due to the insane demand we're having currently, we've implemented a new 'delayed entry program' for prospective joins. You can read some about that here.

Thanks to everyone who has shown interest and participated in our gaming over the years, and here's to another six and a half years of ShackTac.

As always, you can find more about us at the ShackTac site.